


If It Wasn't for All the Lights

by flashindie



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Outside Perspectives, Season 2 spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2019-11-13 08:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18028685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashindie/pseuds/flashindie
Summary: “Figured we could talk shit out, if you wanted.”Ruby leans forwards, squinting, but Rio doesn’t so much as blink.“Why? Because my husband’s a cop, or because you got a thing for my best friend?”*Inspired mostly by prompts from tumblr, this is five outside perspectives of Brio~





	1. Ruby

I

If Ruby’s honest, she’s not sure what she expected.

Like, _they rob a grocery store_ , and they were supposed to get in and get out, that was the promise (granted, one made by _Annie_ ), only there’s more money than they expected, and it feels too good to be true because it is, and the next thing they know they have a couple of inner city gangbangers in Beth’s kitchen, holding a gun on them with one hand and a debt out to them with the other. 

And of course, in hindsight, that is a _very_ Rio move.

He might not look it, not that first time, but he’s almost a weapon in and of himself, something lethal in skinny jeans, boots, and a black hoodie, and Ruby’s not sure if it’s Beth and Annie’s whiteness or if they’re really just that naïve, but they do not take it as seriously as the circumstances demand. 

Of course, Rio doesn’t help. Lapping up Beth’s monologue and inviting them all further and further down his rabbit warren of crime, and look. Ruby has a family. Ruby has _Stan_. She has Lil Money and she has Sara.

God. 

Sara. 

So okay.

Maybe she’s as much That Bitch as Beth and Annie. She _needs_ this, because the bills are piling up and the thought of not paying them and losing her daughter is unimaginable, and so she does it all, job after job after job, every time Beth is there, slipping them in a little deeper. 

Every time, Ruby’s there, letting it happen. 

And she sees it, she does, because how couldn’t she? This bubbling tension that has nothing to do with guns or money or business that simmers between the two of them, her best friend and this _literal_ crime lord, and Ruby has no idea what to do, and she thinks if nothing else, she’ll talk to Beth about it, but then they get fired, and then they set him up, and then everything goes to shit.

II

Or it doesn’t.

Or, well, it _totally_ does – if nothing else, Stan finds out and Dean gets shot, but otherwise it’s almost business as usual. It’s them, newly, freshly indebted to this guy, and pulling jobs that are slipping deeper and deeper into Shit They Don’t Want To Do. Still, Ruby can see the look on Beth’s face, the put upon resignation, and the thrill just beneath it, and Ruby’ll do it because post-transplant bills don’t disappear, and neither do those on a house that’s been mortgaged three times, nor the legal fees on a felony drug charge, and hell. They’d do it for her. 

Still, Rio’s kind of a dick. 

Not that she doesn’t get it. 

They did get him arrested. 

“Yeah, I’m gonna need 200G,” he tells them now, and it feels unnecessary, to do this here, at the elementary school bake sale. Ruby and Beth are elbow deep in cake mix and they’ve checked multiple times to make sure Rio’s kid doesn’t go here, which means he’s gone out of his way to find their kids, to know when the sale was, to know that they’d signed up, which, look, Ruby shouldn’t be shocked. 

“Well, maybe talk to your financial planner, not us,” Beth says beside her, her teeth gritted as she whisks a few eggs, before pouring them into the flour mix, and Ruby could almost roll her eyes. 

“Oh, you think this is a negotiation, sweetheart?” and he leans bodily across the canteen counter, eyes visibly dropping to where Beth’s chest moves as she aggressively stirs the egg mix into the dry mix, and Ruby doesn’t even try to resist rolling her eyes now. 

“Why?” Ruby asks, and Rio’s eyes shift to her (not without a few flickbacks). 

“Because I need it,” he replies bluntly. “And you owe me.” 

“We’ve paid you back.” 

“You turned me in.” 

Ruby just stares at him, and then he shakes his head, gaze finding Beth again. 

“200Gs,” he repeats, sliding off the counter. “You got three days.”

III

And so they do that job, and a few others, and they’re getting back in the swing of things when Stan tells her, hushed and earnest, that one of Rio’s other boys has been compromised. And so Ruby tells Beth, who tells Rio, who laps Beth’s living room once, twice, three times, before stopping back in front of Beth.

“How’d you find out?” he asks her, voice tight and somehow electric all at once – like lightning caught in sound, and Ruby’s eyes skirt Beth’s face, sees it soften, tighten, sees her don that mask. 

“You don’t need to know how I know,” Beth says, taut, and he looks so furious, ready to explode that Ruby steps in. 

“My husband told us. He’s a cop.” 

That’s all it takes for Rio to stop. He lets out a shaky breath, slowly tearing his gaze off Beth and redirecting at Ruby. 

“Your husband’s a mall cop,” he tells her, like he’s certain, and Ruby shakes her head. 

“He got accepted into the academy six months ago. He’s been working as a cop for a while. You took your tabs off me and mine too early.” She squares her shoulders, feeling suddenly defensive, suddenly righteous. “He’s the guy who cuffed your little friend. That _rotten egg_ you dumped in Beth’s daughter’s bed. The one who you killed.” 

And Rio glowers at her then, exhales a hoarse breath that could almost be a laugh. 

“You suburban bitches are somethin’ else,” he says when he finds his words again, and Ruby feels something inside her _snap_. 

“We _suburban bitches_ almost put your _street ass_ in prison,” she says, running hot, stepping forwards, closer to him, and ignoring Beth and Annie’s desperate looks behind her. “I’m not playing this game with you.” She gestures vaguely back to Beth. “She might be, but not me. You don’t get my husband. He’s not involved in this, and if you try to drag him in, we’re going to have a problem, and believe me, I am not someone you want to have a problem with.” 

He stares at her, firmly, his jaw rocking backwards and then forwards, and Ruby stares right back, until Beth is pushing herself between them, standing defensively in front of Ruby, her gaze set on Rio. 

“Look, that doesn’t matter right now,” she says, reaching out to put a placating hand on Rio’s chest, visibly diffusing him, which Ruby doesn’t think goes unnoticed by a single person in the room. “We need to focus.” 

And so they do. 

And Ruby never really knows what the outcome of that night is, but judging by Beth’s ashen face and the hard line of Rio’s mouth, a few nights later, she doesn’t think she wants to.

IV

So it’s like this.

Beth can’t do a drop because the old bullet hole in Dean’s chest gets infected, and she has to don her perfect wife shoes and walk that walk through hospital halls, and Annie picks up a late shift at Fine’N’Frugal, and fuck it, right? They need to offload the cash. Ruby can do it. 

Not that she really wants to. Her and Stan are still treading unsteady water, and if she were honest, Rio still makes her nervous. He’s a skinny guy, but she’s seen enough of what he can do to know he’s not somebody to underestimate, and she also knows she’s not Beth. Hell, she’s not even Annie. She hasn’t wriggled her way into anybody’s softspots, and she gets no passes for being somebody’s tiny, overly jokey little sister. She fixes her cardigan, adjusts her grip on the strap of the bag and walks into the bar. 

Rio’s already there at a corner booth, a few of his boys hovering around him like an ugly shadow, and Ruby drops him the cash and stays standing. 

“Where’re your girls?” Rio asks, not even looking up from his phone, and Ruby rolls her shoulders, makes eye contact, briefly, with the guy she thinks is named Demon, before dropping her gaze back to Rio.

“They’re busy.”

He does look at her again then, his eyes big and dark, his lips pursed, and he doesn’t look away as he passes the bag back to his boys and lets them count the cash. He gestures for her to sit down, opposite him in the booth, and it takes her a few unsteady breaths to actually do it. 

She doesn’t watch him or his boys count, she doesn’t order a drink, and when he seems happy, she says, “You done?” and tries to get up, but he shakes his head, gestures for her to sit down again and Ruby tries to ignore the dread settling like a stone in her gut. 

With little more than a tilt of his head and some other, wordless communication, all of his boys leave, taking the money with them, and then it’s just them – Rio and Ruby, alone in some almost empty suburban bar on a Wednesday night. She’s about to say something, what, she’s not sure, when Rio opens his mouth to speak. 

“You got a problem with me?” he asks, and Ruby could almost laugh.

“Are you joking?” 

And he just shrugs, but there’s a tug at his lips where she thinks maybe he is, which is really not that funny to her at all. She huffs, folding back in her seat. 

“Do you want me to have a problem with you?” she asks, and Rio shrugs. 

“I don’t really care one way or the other.” 

Ruby arches an eyebrow.

“Then why do you want me to stay?”

“Figured we could talk shit out, if you wanted.” 

Ruby leans forwards, squinting, but Rio doesn’t so much as blink. 

“Why? Because my husband’s a cop, or because you got a thing for my best friend?” 

Rio doesn’t answer that, and she’s thinking of probing deeper when a drink arrives in front of her – a white wine, chilled. She looks up at him and he just shrugs as the waiter offers him a beer of his own. 

“Didn’t think you’d cut to the chase so quickly,” he says, and Ruby arches her other eyebrow.

“You want to small talk?” She knows he doesn’t, but she can’t resist. “You know we had no idea you had a kid?” 

“No shit,” then he looks at her properly, takes a sip of his beer. “You got any?” 

The question surprises her. She’s sure he knows more than he lets on – if nothing else, he’d seen her holding Sara at Kenny’s birthday party, seen both her and Harry at the park playing with Beth’s kids and Sadie that day he’d brought his son around, but then again, she knows he has tunnel vision when it comes to Beth, and right now he seems genuinely interested, and the focus on her so suddenly and so fully makes her realise why Beth is so pulled in by it. 

“Two,” she says finally. “Harry’s just a little younger than yours, I’m guessing. Sara’s almost twelve though. I am dreading adolescence, let me tell you.” 

Rio laughs at that, sitting back in his seat.

“Can’t say I’ve highlighted it in my calendar.” 

The candour surprises her. 

“Like you keep a calendar,” Ruby says, and Rio arches an eyebrow at her, surprised. “You seem like a schedule guy.” 

And that, weirdly, makes him huff out a laugh. 

“Well, I’m a busy guy,” he says, oddly smug, and Ruby rolls her eyes.

“I’m sure. And, y’know, the rest of us do nothing with our time. We all just sit at home, what, knitting? Watching _Real Housewives_ until you appear in our doorway to offload a task?”

“I didn’t say that.” 

“No, but you’ve thought it.” 

He tilts his beer bottle up at her like an acknowledgement, and she rolls her eyes again, sitting back on her ass as she watches him drink and finally thinks, screw it. 

“Why’d you bring your son to the park?” she asks, and Rio just looks at her. 

“Why do you think?” 

“Well, you either think of that as our weak spot or you think of us as that little a threat,” she says, leaning forwards, and then she frowns. “Or both. Although I don’t know why you’d go to the effort if it wasn’t for the latter.” 

His jaw rocks backwards and then forwards again, and he huffs a little, as Ruby takes a sip of her wine. 

“You said it yourself,” Rio says, surprising her. “You almost put me away. Others have tried, but nobody’s got that far.” 

It’s quiet then, and Ruby just watches him. He really is very handsome. Not her type, obviously, but still. She gets it, and she’s not sure why, but after a moment, she finds herself talking. 

“You’d be right. I mean, with the kid thing. It’s a weak spot. Hell, it’s one of the reasons we did it. The grocery store, I mean. My daughter was dying. She had –” and she cuts herself off. Shakes her head. “She needed a kidney transplant. Urgently. I couldn’t afford the medical bills. Those first few jobs with you, and a couple of jobs since – Beth and Annie, they gave me the full cut. They didn’t even blink, and, you know, they needed that money too. Like, they _really_ needed it… but we had, I mean we knew we had you... I guess what I mean is that I owe you, for real owe you. Them too, but also you. Not in the money way, but in that cosmic, karmic way. My daughter’s alive because of your money. Because of you, taking a chance on us.” 

He just stares at her, and she thinks he’s surprised. 

“Okay,” he says, then, “Okay,” again, softer, finishing his drink. He gestures to her glass. “You want another? My shout.” 

And she looks at him, and suddenly he doesn’t look like this gangbanger, this nightjar, a shadow, creeping through her nightmares, he just looks like a guy. An, admittedly, pretty hot guy. 

“Chardonnay. With ice? I gotta drive home.” 

“Chardonnay with ice,” he repeats back to her, a grin tugging at his lips, and right, Ruby thinks, leaning back in her seat. Okay.

V

So she doesn’t do the drops solo often, but they happen enough now that she gets used to ordering a glass of white wine on arrival and Rio sliding opposite her in whatever bar or diner they agree upon with an expensive looking beer that she’s never even heard of. He usually has a drink waiting for her too, but she never likes to assume – if nothing else, she doesn’t want to establish that he knows her that well.

But still, they always end up talking about the kids. 

“How’s your girl?” he asks this time, tilting his beer towards her. “She still killin’ it in English?” 

“Still killin’ it,” Ruby agrees, resisting the urge to cheers and taking a drink instead. “She’s first speaker now on the debate team.” 

“Huh. Smart kid.” 

“And Marcus?” 

“Made the soccer team. Top of his class in math.” 

“Huh,” Ruby says with a grin and a roll of her eyes, tilting her wine glass in Rio’s general direction. “Smart kid.”

And then they both have another drink, and Ruby briefly loses herself to the sounds of the bar – the tremor of energy, just below the surface, and in the weird, oddly comforting energy that Rio just seems to exude. She’s so lost in it that it takes her a moment to process his next question. 

”How’s your friend?” 

Ruby blinks, head lolling back, unable to stop herself from giving him the side eye. 

“Which friend?” 

He just looks at her, and Ruby shakes her hair out, playing innocent, playing coy. 

“Annie’s doing great actually. She finally quit Fine’N’Frugal, her kid’s doing well in the new school, she’s started dating people again who _aren’t_ her ex-husband, so, y’know, that’s a step in the right direction.” 

Rio does that little huff-breath-laugh-thing he does that Ruby thinks is mostly stupid, taking a drink of his beer and giving her a look over it that says _touché_ , and fuck it, Ruby thinks.

She laughs.

“I mean, come on,” she says around her chortle. “You can say her name, surely.” 

He has another drink, looking over the bar, skirting the crowd, before letting his gaze swing back around to Ruby.

“How’s Elizabeth doin’?” he asks finally, and Ruby laughs all over again. 

“Elizabeth? God, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone call her that since highschool subs.” 

Rio’s jaw rocks backwards and then forwards in irritation. 

“It’s her name, isn’t it?” 

“I mean, sure,” Ruby agrees, her tone light. “But no one calls her that.” 

Rio takes a drink, and she can see it, the moment he starts to shut down in front of her, close off, and she finds herself unwilling to let that happen. Is this what Beth feels like all the time? 

God.

Too stressful.

“She’s okay,” Ruby says. “I mean, it’s hard for her. I don’t know if you’ve met Dean outside of, y’know, shooting him,” her tone is loaded then, and Rio meets her gaze with a blank expression, and she barrels through – or, at least, she tries to. “But he’s kind of…” she fumbles for the word. Anything too insulting feels like a betrayal. She decides on, “They were very young when they got together. Like, highschool young. And Beth settled hard. It was…” she gestures vaguely. “There were a lot of external circumstances. But Dean made sense to date at fifteen, and to marry at twenty-one, but to still be married to? At forty?” 

Ruby shakes her head, tosses her hands up in the air, and when she looks up, Rio is staring at her attentively, and she can feel her shoulders sag in submission. 

“He’s done some nasty stuff to her,” she says, and she sees the way Rio’s jaw clenches. “That’s not for me to tell you though, and, to be fair, she did get him shot. By _you_ , just in case _you_ forgot. It’s not like she’s perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But still…” 

Ruby sighs, leaning back into her seat, thumbing the stem of her wine glass. When she looks up again, Rio is looking out the window into the street, his gaze focused and his forehead creased in thought. Rolling her eyes, Ruby sits up a little straighter. 

“You know if you hurt her, I’ll have to kill you,” Ruby tells him, and his head whips around to look at her. “It’s out of my hands. I don’t care what you’ve done, I don’t care that you’re, like, what, The Godfather of inner-city Detroit. You’re messing with something much more powerful. The best friend code. More than that. The Beth-and-Ruby Code.” 

“Sounds serious,” Rio says, not without warmth, and Ruby just raises both eyebrows at him. 

“It is, bruh,” and then, more seriously. “It’s gotten us both through more than I can say.”

And maybe she meant to keep talking, but she doesn’t want to now, because all she can think of is Beth – Beth and her blankets made of Sara’s baby clothes and favourite quotes and the pineapple upside down cake which she knew was Sara’s favourite and the bottle of scotch because she knew it was Ruby’s, and she shouldn’t be encouraging this, because Beth is playing at being hard, but she’s still _Beth_ who is the kindest, most gentle person Ruby knows, and if she knows nothing else about Rio, it’s that he’s not gentle, even when he plays at being soft. 

“You don’t gotta worry,” he says suddenly, opposite her, and Ruby looks at him as he slides up from the table, closing their tab, squeezing a hand at her shoulder before he leaves, and _dammit_ she thinks, because for just a minute she believes him.


	2. Annie

I

You know, if gangfriend wasn’t, well, _gangfriend_ , Annie really does think she’d go there.

Like, if she met him at a bar or something? She could do worse. Hell, she _has_ done worse. He’s basically an entrepreneur, which is a step up from her usual type of Terrible Unwashed Dumpster Guy Who Stills Lives with His Mom. He dresses well, and he always smells weirdly good – like, a little soapy, and a little like cinnamon – clean and expensive without resorting to bathing in cologne that costs more than Annie’s apartment. Plus, y’know, he’s got a good face, she’s _sure_ a good body, and that real big dick energy that Annie is _totally_ on board for. 

Though of course, she hadn’t met him in a bar. They’re not even in a bar right now, despite the fact that her and Beth had been half a bottle of merlot deep when Rio had decided to drop by Beth’s big ass house and crash _Vanderpump Rules_ (it had been a good episode too, the asshole). 

“You don’t need to do this every time. It’s all there,” Beth says beside her on the sofa, her back straight and her hands curled in the blanket covering hers and Annie’s laps. He doesn’t even respond which – rude – just keeps tapping away on his phone. He’s barely three feet away, sitting on the coffee table opposite them, blocking the TV which still hums tinnily with the sound of Lala Kent’s vocal fry. 

“I think I do,” he drawls, voice low and gravelly in a way that should frankly be illegal. “You ladies don’t exactly have the best track record.” 

One of his guys snorts, and Annie glances over to where three of his guys are sorting through the washed cash in Beth’s dining room. They seem to be taking their sweet-ass time. Annie’s counted it enough times herself these days to know how long it takes. Annie frowns, looking back over at Rio. Or, well, the top of Rio’s head. 

“A couple of mistakes during probationary periods are to be expected. We were new,” Beth says, and Annie leans over below the blanket to dig her nails into Beth’s thigh in the universal language of _please stop pissing off the violent gang leader sitting within arm’s reach_. Beth tries unsuccessfully to knock her hand away. “We’re not new anymore. We haven’t been off in weeks. We do good work for you.” 

“Yeah?” Rio asks, his gaze finally flicking up to them from his phone. It only lands briefly on Annie, before it settles on Beth, and man, Annie thinks, squirming back into the pillows, that is a look that should come with a fair use warning. “So you stealing from me was because you were new?” 

There’s this vague moment of tension then, and Annie thinks about chiming in. After all, Beth’s great at a lot of things, but talking to their friendly neighbourhood gangbanger? She needs to pack up her pumps and her pearls and go home. 

I mean. 

They’re in her home.

But still.

You get the point.

“What my sister is trying to say,” Annie says, interjecting, ignoring Beth’s vaguely furious look and instead focusing on Rio’s mildly curious one. “Is that we are getting the hang of this shit, y’know? I mean, you should see this new guy at the store. He started out and literally could not stop messing things up. We couldn’t put him on checkouts because cash would go missing, we couldn’t put him on the floor, because he’d like, straight up _ignore_ customers, we couldn’t put him out back because he’d vanish like he was your friendly neighbourhood retail ghost.” 

She gestures vaguely out between them all, oddly surprised suddenly to have both Beth and Rio’s full, unwavering attention on her. It throws her off a little, she’s not going to lie, and so she leaves it there, with a pointed look, flopping the hand not clenched around Beth’s thigh back to the couch. 

The silence sits only for a few seconds. 

“And now he’s one of Fine & Frugal’s best employees,” Beth says, coaxing, and Annie scoffs. 

“What? No. They found him rubbing coke on his gums in the storeroom and then trying to like, break into the ladies’ room? It was pretty weird.” 

Beth and Rio both just stare at her, an eerily similar expression on both their faces, until Beth promptly turns back to Rio, powering through. 

“There are obviously exceptions to the rule,” she says. “But you know we’re good. We work our asses off. I mean, you said it yourself. We deliver, and we’ll keep delivering, but you need to have a little bit of trust in us. It’s tit for tat.” 

Rio’s gaze finds Beth’s and Annie can feel that strange, squirmy feeling in her chest again, watching Rio look at her sister. There’s something loaded in the expression, and she thinks he might be pissed only then his eyes drop – to Beth’s lips, then to her neck, and then slowly, pointedly, down to her breasts, they linger, only briefly, his jaw rocking, lips tugging sideways into an almost grin, like he’s thought something completely filthy, and right, Annie thinks. A boob guy. She looks down at her own chest and, not for the first time in her life, frowns. 

After all, half her highschool experience was inviting boys she liked home and having them spend the evening ‘helping’ Beth in the kitchen, trying to ‘accidentally’ brush their hands against her ass or sneak a look down her shirt, and Beth, being the enormous nerd that she was, was almost always totally oblivious to it. 

But…she doesn’t look all that oblivious now. 

Annie can feel her sister’s thigh twitch beneath her grip, and she can’t stop herself from looking at her face, at her unblinking gaze, at the blush just starting to dust her cheeks. 

“We’re good,” one of Rio’s guys says then, and just like that, the spell is broken. Rio lurches up off the coffee table, pocketing his phone and taking a stack of cash from one of the guys. He drops it onto the coffee table where he’d been sitting. 

“Your cut, ladies. See you real soon, yeah?” 

And just like that, he’s gone.

II

“Do you think there’s something going on?” Annie asks Ruby, rocking backwards lightly on the swing. Ruby just arches an eyebrow, still on the park bench, her arms folded over the duffel bag of cash in her arms. “Between Beth and gangfriend, I mean.”

Ruby’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead. 

“Between Beth and gangfriend? Bitch, have you met your sister?”

Annie scowls.

“Have you?” 

Ruby just frowns in reply, looking out across the park, eyes searching out their friendly neighbourhood gang. Employers? Should they be calling them that? Annie shakes her head. She’s getting off track. 

“He like, looks at her,” Annie says. “All the time.” 

“Wow,” Ruby replies. “You picked out your dress for the wedding yet?” 

“Don’t act like I’m crazy. I know I’m not.” 

The noise Ruby makes is one pretty much reserved for Annie – some hoarse, irritated sigh that she’s been levelling at her since she used to babysit her a hundred years ago. Annie rocks back a little on the swing, unreasonably annoyed by the sound. 

“You’re not crazy, but neither is Beth. I mean, you don’t go from _Dean_ to some inner city gangbanger. She’s not _you_.”

Annie scoffs. 

“Like I would ever go for Dean.” 

“Yeah, great, Annie. Dean’s the one to _really_ avoid.” 

Annie opens her mouth to reply, only she doesn’t get the chance. Rio and his guys have somehow materialised out of the darkness, like ghosts or vampires – the bat-turning ones, not the sparkly ones. God, that’s a dated joke, even in her own head. She shakes her head, getting up off the swing and moving to get beside Ruby, who’s already standing, clutching the bag close to her chest. 

“All there?” Rio asks, taking the bag from Ruby, and she nods, watching as he passes it back to his boys for the count. 

“All there,” Ruby replies, leaning back onto her heels. A slightly awkward silence settles over them, and it’s a surprise, when Rio obviously can’t help himself. 

“Where’s your friend?” he asks, still tapping away on his phone, and Annie frowns as Ruby jumps in. 

“She’s gotten held up dropping her daughter at a sleepover. She’ll be here soon,” Ruby supplies, and Rio nods casually, rocking his jaw as he doesn’t even bother gracing them with a look. 

Annie shifts her weight, suddenly unreasonably annoyed, she sighs, and really, she shouldn’t say anything, but she’s never had the best mind-to-mouth filter.

“Sorry you don’t get to eye fuck my sister tonight,” she says under her breath, only judging by the way space and time seems to stop (and the way Ruby’s eyes almost bulge out of her head), it mustn’t be quite as quiet as she thinks. And hey, maybe she got what she wanted, because she seems to have Rio’s full attention now. 

“Excuse me?” he says, voice low and dangerous, and Annie squares her shoulders. _Fuck this guy_ , she thinks, but she holds her breath when he saunters over to her, tall and too-handsome, his lips pursed and his eyes clear. “Want to repeat that?” 

“Not really, no,” Annie replies frankly, voice firm as she tries to ignore her palpating heart, which she can feel from her eye sockets to her toe nails. 

Rio just stands there, watches her for at least half a minute before he scoffs and heads back to his guys, watching them count the cash, and Annie can’t help the way her shoulders sag in relief, ignoring Ruby’s _what the absolute fuck_ look and sitting down flat on the bench. 

The guys finish checking the cash, and Rio makes them check it again, and then again, and about halfway through that third time, Beth shows up, cheeks flushed from darting out from the carpark, her beanie askew and only half her coat buttons done up, and Rio looks at her for just a little too long, before he lurches up. 

“Your cut,” he says, dumping their cash on the park picnic table, and then promptly leaving, and Beth’s eyes are heavy on him as he goes, and Annie glowers at his retreating form, because if this isn’t high school level, she doesn’t know what is.

III

“So like, you and gangfriend,” Annie says, swaying a little on the spot, hand curled around a glass of wine.

They did a drop almost an hour ago, and Rio had spent the entire time with his eyes zeroed in on Beth which wouldn’t really bother Annie – what can she say? She’s used to it at this point – only his eyes weren’t undressing her like they usually were. And sure, they certainly weren’t putting more clothes _on_ (she thinks maybe he took off her coat, and maybe her shirt, but leaving her bra and pants on was hella unusual), but there was something else in his look that had almost made Annie shiver, and when she’d looked at Beth, she’d seen it there, softer maybe, but there, in her sister’s gaze too. 

“You really need to stop calling him that,” Beth says, rolling her eyes as she finishes dicing the carrots and parsnip. She’s already in her sweatpants, her hair pinned off her face, an embroidered apron hanging off her shoulders. They’re standing in Beth’s kitchen, her kids watching the latest _Toy Story_ movie in the next room, the early evening leaking darkness all around them. 

“Because?” 

“Because we know his name? And it’s a little weird.” 

“Why? It’s affectionate! He calls us _suburban bitches_ we get to call him _gangfriend_. To be frank, I think he’s gotten the better end of the deal.” 

Beth just rolls her eyes, throwing the vegetables into a pot on the stove, adding stock, a few herbs, the whole chicken she’d browned off earlier. 

“What are you even making anyway?” Annie asks, squinting, and Beth wipes her hands on her apron. 

“It’s this French chicken stew thing? I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Karen gave me the recipe a few weeks ago, and she just keeps asking if I’ve made it yet when we carpool the kids to soccer. She loves it, but you know Karen.”

“Sure,” Annie agrees. “She thinks salt is an exotic flavor.” 

Beth snorts on a laugh, adding the garlic, pepper, sage and a generous helping of parsley. Annie watches her sister move about the kitchen, a picture of domesticity. She could be in a Hallmark movie. Hell, she could be on a Hallmark _card_. She bites the inside of her cheek, trying to picture her with Rio. Not sexually, that would be weird, although…Annie concedes, it would be nice for her sister to get her freak on a bit. Not that Annie wants to imagine it, gross, she’s talking more like, broadly.

Although obviously she’d want the details. 

Speaking of… 

“So you got a thing for gangfriend?” she asks, and Beth almost drops the knife she’s holding. 

“ _What?_ ” she hisses, apparently outraged, eyes darting to the living room, like to see if the kids heard, which would be much more effective if there wasn’t a bright blush on her cheeks. “I’m married.” 

Annie scoffs.

“Barely.” 

Beth flusters a little, but quickly busies herself with cleaning up the dinner prep, and checking the pot as it cooks, and Annie watches, still squinting as she sips on her glass of wine. Eventually, Beth turns back to her, obviously having been _stewing_ herself. (Come on, that’s funny). 

“Why are you even asking that?” Beth says, and Annie rolls her eyes. 

“Because I’m your sister? It’s my job to pry?” 

Beth rolls her eyes, checking on the dinner again for the umpteenth time in like, ten minutes. 

“And because the feeling is definitely there on his end,” Annie adds, faux casual, and to her surprise, Beth laughs, loud and bright. 

“You should bottle it.”

“What?” she asks, forehead furrowing, and Beth just grabs the wooden spoon, stirring the simmering stock. 

“Your imagination.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“I’m saying that you are insane. The only thing he’s interested in is us getting him his money.” 

And right, Annie thinks, watching her sister stir dinner, her neck blushed red and a stiffness to her arm that wasn’t there before. 

Right.

IV

“Just a little while longer,” Kenny begs, hands clasped together, his eyes wide. He pouts, and god, he looks like Dean to a slightly uncomfortable degree. Annie shakes her head.

“No dice, buddy. You were supposed to be in bed more than an hour ago, and I’ll be a dead aunty forced to haunt you for eternity if your mom gets home and finds you still awake.” 

“But Sadie’s staying up.” 

“Yeah, that’s because Sadie has a cool mom, unlike you.” 

Kenny frowns at that, eyes downcast, and Annie just pulls a face as she stretches down to tug him up by the arm. They’re spread out on the floor in Beth’s living room, watching late night TV, and she’s not really kidding – Beth will totally kill her if she doesn’t get this kid to bed. It only takes another minute or so of coaxing before he drags himself off the couch and joins his siblings upstairs in dreamland, and Annie collapses back onto the couch. 

“That was kinda mean,” Sadie says beside her, and Annie rolls her eyes. 

“What would be mean is letting him stay up and having your dear Aunty Beth stop in and kill us all,” Annie says, sticking out her tongue and sliding up off the sofa. “You want a late night pop tart?” 

“You know it,” Sadie cheers with a wide grin, and Annie finger guns her as she back up into the kitchen. She’s barely even paying attention, still trying to listen to the movie in the other room, so the only reason she finds out somebody else is in the kitchen is when she almost runs straight into him. She looks up and yelps.

Loud.

“Mom?” Sadie calls from the other room, and Annie flusters. 

“I think I saw a mouse,” Annie yells back. “Don’t come in here. It might have rabies.” 

And it’s Rio, of course it’s Rio, standing there and giving her a weird, slightly baffled look, and Annie waves her hands around as if to say _what the fuck did you want me to say. _She hopes he hears that.__

__“What are you doing here?” she hisses, her voice low, and Rio shrugs, leaning back against the kitchen counter like he belongs there._ _

__“Where’s your sister?” he asks, without so much as a hello, and isn’t he just as charming as always. Annie glowers at him, moving towards the pantry to grab the box of pop tarts._ _

__“Not here. She’s out. I’m babysitting.”_ _

__“Brave woman, your sister,” he says. “Leavin’ you in charge of somethin’.”_ _

__She just gives him a look, dropping a couple of pop tarts into the toaster, and opening her mouth to say, what, she’s not exactly sure (look, not that she often does), when a voice sounds clear behind her._ _

__“Mom?”_ _

__Annie turns around, finding Sadie in the doorway of the kitchen, looking a little cautious, her eyes fixed on Rio in that way she gets when Annie’s _night befores_ don’t quite make it out in time. _ _

__“I told you not to come in,” Annie snaps, and Sadie just rolls her eyes, burying her hands into the pockets of her jeans._ _

__“Then you should’ve come up with a better lie. I don’t know what planet you live on, but on Earth there’s no way Aunt Beth would have mice.”_ _

__“Fair,” Annie replies, the toaster popping behind her. She flips the pop tarts, and sends them down again, and when she looks back at her daughter, she can’t exactly say she’s surprised to find her gaze still curiously focused on Rio._ _

__“Hi,” she says, and Rio nods over at her._ _

__“Hey.”_ _

__“This is a friend of Aunty Beth’s,” Annie says, jumping in quickly, then makes a point of looking back at Rio, eyebrow raised. “He got his night’s wrong.”_ _

__Rio clenches his jaw a little in reply, giving her that firmly unimpressed look that she’s mostly used to getting from him these days, and man, that’s not a look she ever expected to be this blasé about getting from a guy like him, but whatever._ _

__Either way, Sadie doesn’t seem to pick up on the energy, instead she blinks, grinning, still curious, but in a different way now, and god, Annie really needs to do better with stranger-danger._ _

__“A friend of Aunt Beth’s?” Sadie repeats, looking at Rio and then her grin grows to lightspeed levels, bright as anything, and Annie’s heart clenches in her chest. How did she make something this good?_ _

__“I like your jacket,” Sadie says, and Rio rolls his shoulders back, tilting his neck, and he smiles, just a little, just enough._ _

__“Yeah? Thanks. You got good taste in shoes.”_ _

__Sadie makes a point of flipping out her polished brogues, showcasing them, and Rio looks dutifully impressed in the way only people who know kids can do, and Annie finds herself unreasonably annoyed at the prospect of Rio being _nice_. Her focus finds Sadie again, and she gestures back to Beth’s living room. _ _

__“You need to get back in there, dude, I mean, who’s going to recap the bits I miss if neither of us are watching it?”_ _

__Sadie rolls her eyes._ _

__“We’ve seen it a hundred times.”_ _

__“Never in your Aunt Beth’s house though. It might make it different. We might pick up on different things, it’s a different environment, you know? Sometimes that’s all you need to have an entirely different experience of a movie.”_ _

__Sadie rolls her eyes, exhales a huffing little breath, but that grin is still wide and soft on her face._ _

__“Do you want to say _different_ again,” she says with a grin, starting backwards, but not without one final look at Rio. “It was nice to meet you.” _ _

__“You too,” he replies, voice lighter than Annie thinks she’s ever heard it, and she watches Sadie disappear back into the living room, standing sideways enough that she’s sure she’s back on the couch and not eavesdropping from the hallway. When she is, Annie turns back around to Rio, and almost jumps out of her skin. He’s only a step or two closer to her, and that alone wouldn’t be much, but with the weight of his gaze? Annie feels herself suddenly squirm._ _

__“How old’s she?” he says, words quick, and Annie blinks, before squinting up at him. Like, this fucking guy._ _

__“How old’s your kid?”_ _

__Rio rocks his jaw, back and forth, looking at her considering, and then after a second says, “Younger than yours.”_ _

__“Well, I was young when I had her,” Annie says, gesturing. “Don’t you have a file on us, anyway?”_ _

__“On you? Nah,” he says with a laugh, tilting his head, and Annie scowls._ _

__“Okay,” she replies. “Well, you messed up. Beth’s out for the night. She and Deansy are on a date, and so I am the house mom tonight.”_ _

__“Good for them,” he says, settling in as he boils the kettle and fishes around in Beth’s cabinets for tea bags, and Annie’s so surprised that she’s briefly not sure what to do, and then, stupid, she thinks. Nothing about this guy should surprise her anymore. He’s so blatantly disinterested in her, that Annie can’t help but keep talking._ _

__“If you must know, no, it’s not a date. Deansy’s dad had a little fall and his mom had a total meltdown, because she is seriously the exact person you think would have mothered Dean, and Beth’s looking after all of them, because it’s _Beth_ , and it’s what she _does_.”_ _

__She’d been annoyed about it when Beth had told her too. She’d been able to hear Dean crying in the background, even on the phone, over what turned out to be his father’s sprained ankle and like, sure, the guy was _old_ , but man. Harden up. The guy’s younger than Marian, and she’d had a still weeping cut in the back of her leg from a tumble for three days before she’d mentioned it to Annie on one of her last visits. It had needed stitches! _ _

__Then again, the guy’s the one who _fathered_ Dean, which. Gross. _ _

__When she looks up, Rio is pouring boiling water into his mug, a vague look of annoyance on his face which he promptly covers when he catches Annie looking, and for some reason, for once, she doesn’t think the look is aimed at her. That’s all it takes for Annie to be reminded of the fact that this is the guy who shot Dean in the chest._ _

__“Do you have your gun on you?”_ _

__Rio looks back at her properly then, dropping his tea bag into the mug – Earl Grey, who’d have thought? And leaning back against the counter._ _

__“Why do you want to know?”_ _

__“In case you shoot me?”_ _

__“I got a reason to shoot you?”_ _

__“No,” she says instantly, more out of habit than anything, and then she stops, considering. “I mean, I don’t know. I think I might annoy you? I annoy a lot of people.”_ _

__Rio just laughs, dipping his tea bag._ _

__“I ain’t shootin’ anybody for being annoying.”_ _

__“Well, you shot Deansy.”_ _

__“Yeah?” Rio asks, his face a picture of innocence. “He annoying?”_ _

__Annie squints at him._ _

__“Have you met him?”_ _

__Rio just shrugs a bit, and Annie shifts her weight a little where she stands._ _

__“Why are you here?” she asks, and Rio looks sideways._ _

__“Me and your sister are in business together.”_ _

__“Right,” Annie says. “But also it’s like, almost 11 at night, and, oh yeah, _she’s not here_.” _ _

__“She’ll be back soon though, yeah?”_ _

__“I don’t actually know. She said that they were going to stay until Mrs. Boland Senior calmed down, and look, if I know her, that could take us into the post-climate-change-apocalypse.”_ _

__He pauses, takes a sip of his tea, and then everything just kind of stops. The pop tarts come up, and Annie pulls them out of the toaster. She watches him, watching her, and man, she has to shake herself out of this vague sense of tension. How does Beth handle this? He’s seriously too much._ _

__“You know Beth’s like, incredibly lame, right,” Annie says, reaching out between them, not enough to touch him, but enough for him to know she’s serious. “She irons t-shirts. She knows how to cross-stitch. She has _bookmarked articles_ on cross-stitching on her computer. She will lecture you for your entire life on the difference between a cake and a buckle. Don’t ask.” _ _

__“I know what a buckle is,” he says, voice low, and Annie reels back, staring at him._ _

__“You do? I mean like, the cake type, not the belt type.”_ _

__“Fruit sinks to the middle,” he supplies, taking a sip of tea. “My ma used to make ‘em.”_ _

__Annie just stares at him, briefly shell shocked, before she bursts into laughter._ _

__“And you’re into it?” she says, still laughing, and she watches curiously as Rio clenches his jaw in the back, looking in no small part annoyed. She should probably be intimidated, but it’s hard to be intimidated by a guy who knows what a buckle is. At least in the moment. “Wow, well aren’t we a regular _Breakfast Club_. You’re the Judd Nelson to her Molly Ringwald.” _ _

__And that seems to briefly throw him, his jaw loosening, his forehead furrowing, and Annie blinks, jerking her head back in surprise._ _

__“ _Breakfast Club_ ,” Annie repeats. “Iconic movie of the eighties? Five kids in detention? They become better people by talking about their terrible parents and giving unnecessary makeovers? No? Nothing?” _ _

__Rio just shrugs. He pushes off the counter slightly, dropping his cup into the sink and looking sideways at the clock. He purses his lips, rocking sideways slightly._ _

__“I don’t watch a lot of movies.”_ _

__Annie feels her eyes widen to dinner plate size._ _

__“ _What?_ ” she hisses and Rio turns just enough to level her with that blank stare of his. _ _

__“I don’t have a lot of free time,” he says, the insinuation that she _obviously does_ is painfully loud. _ _

__“Rude,” Annie replies, with no small bit of amusement. “I’ll be back in a sec.”_ _

__She flips the pop tarts onto a plate, and ducks them into Sadie, before heading back to the kitchen._ _

__“And another thing,” Annie says, stopping in the doorway, but any other words die on her lips. He’s gone._ _

__“Fucker,” she says, with a little more affection than she’d care to admit._ _

____

V

Annie’s halfway through the latest episode of _The Walking Dead_ when she looks up to her (definitely locked) door being pulled open, and Rio stepping inside. So what if she screams? So what if Rio’s there, looking incredibly, annoyingly amused.

“Oh, laugh it up, buddy,” she hisses, reaching for the remote to pause the zombie grunts on the TV. She’s had enough vodka and not enough dinner to feel vaguely buzzed, but still. It’s weird. This is now her sister’s _partner_ , at least professionally, and what? Her sister’s local dicking, personally? Annie doesn’t know. Beth is very insistent on the no-labels thing. 

She’s still _technically_ married after all. 

And running her husband’s business with _said_ local dicking. 

There’s a lot to unpack there. 

Right now instead though, Annie would rather think about the fact that she’s pretty sure this is the first time Rio has been in her apartment, and look. It’s not great. She still has almost $10,000 worth of appliances she hasn’t been able to return pushed against the back wall, hundreds of Sadie’s sticky notes plastered to the walls, and at least four days’ worth of dishes piled up at her sink.

So what? Annie does what Annie usually does. 

She goes on the offensive. 

“What are you doing here?” she yells, and then, with a squint. “How do you always know where we are? Do you track our phones? Our cars?” she gasps, gesturing to her stomach. “Did you slip something into our drinks? Like do we have all have a microchip or something floating around inside us?” 

Rio just rolls his eyes, pressing his back into her door.

“No need for it,” he says, arching an eyebrow. “You ladies don’t get out much.” 

And Annie scowls. 

“Rude,” she says, and Rio just shrugs, pushing off the wall and taking a look around her apartment. 

“This is technically breaking and entering,” she tells him, and he doesn’t even look at her when he says, “You want me to go?” 

Annie pauses, and realises she doesn’t actually think she cares. _The Walking Dead_ episode had been a dud anyway. Not nearly enough Michonne to make her care. Plus she’s kind of curious to know why he’s here. 

“Nah,” she replies, leaning back into the couch and watching him look around her apartment. He pauses at a picture of Beth and Sadie on the fridge, sliding a little closer to it, and she wonders if he realises he’s even doing it. 

But he keeps moving, leonine around her apartment, until he sees her Fine & Frugal uniform hanging by her bedroom door, and leans back, observing it casually, and when he speaks, it’s not to say what she expects. 

“It takes balls to rob the place you work at.” 

Annie blinks, adjusting her seat, and she looks at him, really looks at him, and he seems a little pissed off, a little waylaid, his eyes dark and his posture tense, and okay, Annie thinks. Okay.

“Well, those I have in spades, brother. Do you want a drink?” 

He looks over at her then, eyebrow arched. 

“What do you have?” 

She rocks up off the couch, beelining for her cabinet, and most of her liquor is, well, pretty crap, but whatever. She pulls out the nicest (still pretty crap) bottle she has. 

“Vodka?” she says, waving it at him, and he takes a look at the label and huffs out a laugh.

“You and your sister don’t share taste, huh?” he says, and Annie for real laughs. 

“Not in many things, no,” she replies. “Although we do both like French cheese _and_ cream in a can, although Beth will deny it to her dying day – she’d rather pretend to _enjoy_ hand whipping the real stuff,” Annie rolls her eyes. “We’re also both _very_ into Storage Wars. We got hooked on it when she was on bed rest while she was preggo with Danny, and I think it’s gotten us both through some challenging times.” 

At Rio’s blank look, Annie gasps, but grabs him out a mug anyway, pouring him a generous cup of straight vodka and topping off her own. 

“Storage Wars? Iconic reality show about repossessed storage lockers? Man, you really don’t watch a lot of TV, huh?” 

“I told you before, I don’t really have the time.” 

“And I bet when you do it’s kid stuff, right? When Sadie was your kid’s age, she was so into _Pokemon_ , and like, there is a dedicated part of my memory now to those weird little monsters that I cannot erase. What am I going to do with knowing the evolutionary cycle of a Charmander? Nothing! But I know it!”

“We don’t let him watch too much TV.” 

He’s a little smug when he says it, and Annie glowers. 

“Well, I hope he’ll be okay in highschool when he realises he’s been denied his third parent.” 

Rio just gives her a look, and Annie waves her arms around.

“Television. It’s the universal, shared third parent.” 

“He does fine with just me and his mami,” Rio says, and Annie blinks, trying to hide her grin. Well. This worked out better than she could ever have planned. 

“Right,” Annie says. “You and your-”

Rio just stares at her blankly again, and Annie starts to fill in the gaps herself.

“Wife? Girlfriend? Ex? Baby mama? I mean, obviously the last one, but can I phone a friend? Ask the audience?”

He doesn’t reply, and Annie just scoffs. 

“You know what? You’re in my apartment, you weren’t invited. I don’t even know why you’re here. You work with Beth, I work with Beth, sure, but we don’t work together. I mean, I know there’s more to it than that these days,” Annie says, voice loaded and only a little teasing. “I mean, I know her intimately emotionally, you know her intimately _physically_. Although I will say I know her vagina fairly well too. I have tragically seen way too many babies like, crawl out of it _The Ring_ style. I know you probably don’t get that reference, but trust me, it checks out. The miracle of life? More like the eternal nightmare, am I right?” 

“Ex,” Rio says suddenly, and she blinks, surprised, but quickly covers it. It was probably to shut her up. She gets that. It’s how she often gets to the crux of an issue. She raises her mug to cheers him from the other side of the kitchen.

“You and me both, brother. This co-parenting stuff is real work. And hey, at least we only have the one, right? I mean, Beth’s about to travel down that road with _four_ of them, and I can’t even begin to imagine how not-fun it’s going to be. Because like, I don’t know about your ex, but mine’s okay most of the time, and Deansy is like…”

She just kind of grimaces, and she can feel Rio watching her and wonders if she should stop talking, but Rio’s taking a drink of the vodka and barely even flinching, and then he’s looking at her and he’s talking. 

“Your kid with pa now?” 

“Yep,” Annie says, topping her drink off again. “Joint custody’s a bitch.” 

He makes a commiserating face like he knows, and well, Annie thinks, leaning over to top up his mug too. 

“What are you doing here anyway? Beth should be at her place. Don’t know where else she’d be on a Saturday night.” She glances up at him, frowning. “Why aren’t you over there?” 

He bites the inside of his cheek in a way that should, frankly, be illegal, but he doesn’t answer her question. He just looks down into his mug, swishing it around, and says, “Might not be joint custody much longer.” 

Annie blinks, something hot clenching in her belly. 

“What?” 

He looks up at her then, gaze steady. 

“Your friend told me you and your baby daddy been hittin’ it again.” 

Annie’s not entirely sure what look passes over her face, but she figures it’s probably a gauntlet of emotions finished off with a very distinct _what the fuck is going on_. It’s obviously enough of a confirmation for Rio to continue though. 

“Fuckin’ your ex is never a good idea,” his voice heavy with history and right, Annie thinks, waving a hand out in his direction.

“Oh really?” she says instead. “I thought all the best relationships were built on the burial grounds of your previous attempts to _make it work_. Your old issues are just there, ready to pop up like zombies.”

“Why do you want to get back with him anyway?” he asks, and Annie gives him the side eye.

“Why do you care?” 

“Just makin’ conversation.” 

Annie watches him for a minute, the dark set of his face, the deceptive leanness to him. She has no doubt as to his strength. Has seen it, more times than she cares for. She shakes her head, and instead thinks about Greg, and _God_ , they’ve made a mess of that again, haven’t they?

“I don’t know. I mean, like, we’ve got a rhythm together,” she says.

“Rhythm’s good to have,” Rio agrees, and Annie looks at him, surprised by the generosity of it. By the softness in his face. 

“Yeah, it is.” 

“Why didn’t it work the first time?” 

Annie grimaces, her gut clenching. She flails briefly, and then takes a big gulp from her mug, kicking her kitchen tiles with her bare feet. Rio doesn’t take his eyes off her, his focus intense and considering, and man, Annie knows she’s short, but Rio is _tall_ in every sense of the word. 

“We were teenagers when we had Sadie,” she says after a minute. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We were just messing around, and then we were pregnant, and we got married because my dad said we _couldn’t_ and his said we _had to_ , and fuck. It was just. We did the best we could, which was really terrible,” She flails again, and then sags, glancing sideways at where Rio’s watching her. “The only reason I’m not like, dead, is because Beth was there. Hell, the only reason I graduated high school is because Beth and Ruby looked after Sadie and forced me to study.” 

And it’s not anything he does. He’s just listening, unfairly kind, active, but fuck, if everything doesn’t just slot into place. 

“Oh my God. You want to know if I think Beth and Deansy will get back together. That’s what you’re asking,” she says, and she laughs, loud and hard, for maybe a minute too long, and she can see the way he straightens, jaw clenching, and just _oh my god_. “You’re hilarious.” 

That was probably the wrong thing to say, judging by the vaguely murderous look on his face, and Annie has a drink to try and organise her thoughts (see? She’s getting better at it!) She sighs, putting her cup on the counter, and gesturing broadly.

“Look, man, I gave up pretending I knew what Beth was going to do around the time we robbed a grocery store. I don’t know what she’s going to do.” 

He clenches his jaw in reply, looks away from her, has a drink from the mug, and this time, he does grimace, which, _rude_. 

Annie sighs. 

“What I do know though is that she doesn’t love him,” Annie says. “And the only unfinished business there is like, really bad, toxic shit, ya know? Me and Greg,” she shrugs. “There’s good shit left there too. Beth and Dean? It’s _all_ bad now.” 

She looks over at Rio, and she’s surprised, at the softness in his look, the vulnerability there. _This guy has killed people_ , she reminds herself, and her body stiffens, but at the same time. 

Fuck.

She thinks he’s in it with Beth. 

And anyone who’s in it with Beth? They’ve got to be in it with Annie and Ruby. 

“Ruby read you the riot act already?” Annie says knowingly, and at least that makes Rio bark on a laugh, one with a weird amount of affection that Annie is definitely going to have to talk to Ruby about later. 

“To hell and back,” Rio supplies, and Annie laughs, raising her mug up to cheers, and this time, Rio meets her halfway, a smile on his face, instead of a smirk, and _oh_ , Annie thinks, maybe this is what Beth sees.


	3. Dean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set between the end of 2.06 and the end of 2.08.

I

The thing is, he’s not a _total_ idiot.

Like, he’d be the first to say that they’ve been out of sync for years, and y’know, maybe that’s a little bit his fault. He’s a big enough man to admit that, just - - it’s not _just_ his fault. 

“Can you – “ 

Beth’s hand hits him lightly in the shoulder as she speaks, her body stiff beneath him, and Dean flusters, flushes, glancing down at where he’s still inside her, her hips trapped between him and the edge of the sink. She bats at him again, and Dean slides out of her, takes a step back, pulling up his underwear, his jeans, watching as Beth wriggles her wet panties the rest of the way down and smooths her dress back down over her ass, concealing as much of her pale skin as physically possible. 

As weird as it is to think, it’s moments like this that he remembers his dad the most – remembers long afternoons at the lake, hauling out his dad’s little motorboat to sit lazily on the water surface, their fishing rods slung over the side to catch yellow perch or white bass, remembers his dad letting him throw back a beer, remembers all the ways those afternoons would make him feel like the exact sort of man he wanted to be. 

His dad was tall with thin lips and a healthy head of chestnut hair that would look copper in the afternoon light. He was a man of few words except for when he wasn’t, and when he wasn’t he was either prone to selling something or imparting these snapshots of wisdom that Dean would collect like baseball cards.

“You know, son,” he’d say. “Don’t buy into that men are from Mars, women are from Venus crap. We’re not from different planets – that stuff, it oversimplifies it. It’s like - - men, we’re cars, y’know, and women are - - they’re like bicycles. It’s not just that we’re made in different factories, the machinery itself is different.” 

And then he’d laugh, elbow Dean, waggle his eyebrows. 

“And not just _that_ machinery either.” 

Then Dean would laugh too, as if on cue, flushed a little at the thought, drink, tug on his fishing line, wait for his dad’s baritone to fill the air again. 

“We’re just made differently, and there’s no point trying to change that, y’know? It’s like – cars can’t drive so easy on bike paths, not without messing it up for the bikes, and I think we can all agree that a bike never belongs on a formula racetrack. Hell, ask me, half the time they shouldn’t even be allowed on the road. No, see, I think bikes do best on bike paths, just like cars do best on the road. And those things can run beside each other sometimes of course, but you know. Not always.” 

Dean would nod in agreement, thinking of the girls at school, thinking of his mother, of his aunts, his cousins – all the women he didn’t really understand back then. It’s not that he didn’t try to – he liked talking to them, liked making them laugh, liked making the girls at school twirl their hair and blush when he offered them rides home or let them kiss his football helmet for luck before games, but he didn’t get the way that they’d _look_ at him sometimes, like he was a crossword they were filling in or – worse – like a joke they’d heard before. 

“A bike can actually travel in a car too,” his dad would continue. “You can put it in the trunk or on a bike bar. A car can - - can really _carry_ a bike, y’know? In fact, a car _should_ carry a bike some places. It’s the job of a car. To carry things. To carry a lot of things. The job of a bike is to carry one person or - - y’know, sometimes one of those little carts with kids or whatever, but - - point is, bikes are really - - _monogamous_ , I suppose. Cars though, cars aren’t made for one person. In fact, trunk of a good car can even fit a lot of bikes in it, but a bike can’t be in more than one car at a time. Not without, y’know, dismantling. Which nobody wants of course – bikes lose value that way, but see, with cars - - it’s normal. Do you get what I’m saying?” 

And he hadn’t really, back then, but as he’d gotten older - - well, it had made sense. Dean was a car. He needed polishing and maintenance and okay, sure, a few bikes on his bike bar too, and he’d thought for ages that that was where his and Beth’s differences came from. She was one of those bikes with the little cart on the back for the kids, and maybe when she’d put that thing on she couldn’t, y’know, _fit_ in his trunk anymore, but now – well. 

Now he’s starting to think Beth’s never been a bike. Amber, Patti, Margo, sure, but Beth - - she was like a - - a _Back to the Future_ hoverboard. From the moment he met her, she was something unknowable and confusing, something mysterious and cool that he couldn’t really explain, and that had been fun for a while, but as much as Dean hated to admit it - - he was more of a bicycle kind of guy. 

“That was - - _wow_ ,” he tells her, zipping up his pants, and taking another step back. He tries to catch her eye, wants to smile at her, make sure she knows it was good for him, but Beth studiously avoids him as she kicks her panties off the rest of the way, moving to grab a tea towel from the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinets, wets it at the sink, and wipes aggressively at the insides of her thighs. Dean watches, shifting his weight, not entirely sure what to do with himself, and he opens his mouth to say something – what, he has no idea – when Beth suddenly swipes hard at her cheek, furiously, and just - - it was where he’d tried to kiss her, where she’d batted him away. Dean frowns.

“Did you - - I mean, did you - -?” he gestures a little to her, hopes she picks up the implication because they’ve never really talked about her, _y’know_ (God, for years he wasn’t sure she even could – it was always so much _harder_ with her than it was with other women) and she does look up at him then as she finishes cleaning herself up, her blue eyes big and her lips gently parted, and Dean almost loses his breath. She really is beautiful, he thinks, the evening light making her glow as she turns around to rinse the tea towel in the kitchen sink. 

“Sure,” she says, voice light and airy. She squeezes the water out of the tea towel, and then pauses, her gaze lingering out the window, and Dean feels a white hot thread of anger coil through him, because if that guy is there again - - but he looks over her shoulder, and there’s no one there. Dean pauses, gaze sliding back to Beth, who studiously avoids his gaze. She leans down to pick her panties up off the floor and heads towards the laundry room, dropping them into the hamper. 

Dean almost follows – almost trails after her, but shit, he thinks he needs a beer. He rubs at his head, watches Beth step back out of the laundry and head instead to their - - _her_ \- - bedroom, barely sparing him a second glance.

“It was different,” he calls after her, but Beth doesn’t so much as turn around. 

And just - - 

_Hoverboard_ , he thinks. 

Total fucking hoverboard.

II

They’re barely at school drop off when Danny turns around and hurls in the backseat of the minivan, his little face pale, and his forehead sweaty, and Dean swears, smacking his hands down on the steering wheel in a way that sets Kenny shyly back in the passenger seat beside him. He mumbles out an apology, just - - Beth had said it last night, that Danny had felt clammy when she’d kissed him goodnight, but she’d been gone in the morning and Dean had just wanted Danny to - - y’know, man up and go to school to prove Beth _wrong_ , but now here he was, with a car full of puke and his daughter’s screaming _ewewewewewewewewew_ in the back like some sort of football chant.

He blinks hard, pulling the car over towards the footpath and turning around in his seat. 

“You okay there, buddy?” 

The little shake of Danny’s head as he presses his forehead into the cool car window is just this side of pathetic, and Dean sighs. 

“Okay, we’re heading home. Guys, can you get out here?” 

“You’re supposed to check us in with the drop-off lady,” Kenny says beside him, pointing down to where a bird-like woman with a blonde perm scrolls through names on an iPad. Dean takes her in, before turning back to where Danny’s vomited breakfast of cereal and orange juice is soaking into the carpeted floor of the minivan. 

“Well,” Dean says, turning back to Kenny. “You’ve just graduated to a cool new big brother club where you get to check yourself and your sisters in!” 

Kenny blinks in reply, makes a nervous noise in the back of his throat as Dean leaps from the minivan, avoiding the congested traffic to pull open the backdoor, unclipping Jane and Emma from their carseats and pulling them out. He’s got their backpacks on and is nudging them towards the drop-off attendant (and is carefully ignoring her blatantly gesturing him over to her), when he stops. 

“Wait, what number do I call to tell them Danny’s sick?” Dean asks them, and they all stare blankly back at him, and y’know, everyone always says they look like Dean, but right now he’s got three sets of Beth’s blue Bambi eyes blinking at him, and he hates that it makes him twitch. 

Anyway, Beth doesn’t answer her phone, and really Dean’s never been like - - the _sick_ parent, y’know, and so instead of going home he drives himself and Danny to Boland Motors, wondering if he can get one of the staff to clean up the puke while he passes Danny off to Beth, already preparing himself for her _I told you so_ look (because she never actually says it, but at least that look is one that he _knows_ ). 

Stepping into the dealership, Dean drops Danny off in the new Kids Corner, before beelining towards his old office, rifling through what to say to her in his head and waving the odd hellos to the employees who used to answer to him, and he already feels on edge when he stops dead in the hallway. 

Because through the glass walls of his office, he can see Beth standing up beside her desk, her arms moving like she’s deep in trying to argue a point, and it’s just - - _he’s_ there too, the bounce house guy, standing opposite her with his arms folded over his chest, a beanie pulled low down on his head, his eyes fixed down on Beth as she talks to him. He seems to - - well, he just seems to be listening to her talk. Every now and then his mouth moves, he gestures, like he’s asking her questions, and he can see Beth’s body pull tight like a string, can see her shift, and then she launches into something else. 

It’s enough to make Dean blink, a swell of emotion in his chest that he can’t quite figure out, because this is just not what he expects, when he thinks about them, and a part of him is furious (because how much of his life does this guy want to step into?), but the other part of him is just - - mostly confused. He shifts his weight, watching as the guy throws his head back, visibly exhaling at something Beth’s said in - - in exasperation, maybe? Dean’s not sure, but the movement is enough for the guy to catch Dean’s eye through the glass wall of the office, and he looks - - curious maybe, at first, but then something else passes over the guys face and he just _grins_. 

Squaring his shoulders, Dean’s almost ready to barge into the office when suddenly the guy shifts forwards, stepping into Beth’s space, his gaze dropping back to her, and _good luck with that_ , Dean thinks with a snort - - only - - only Beth doesn’t step back, or away. Beth doesn’t even twitch, just keeps talking, gesturing, arguing a point, and the guy’s just nodding down at her, reaching out to curl a hand at her hip. She must say something then, because the guy laughs, but he doesn’t move his hand and Beth doesn’t try to pry it away from him, in fact - - in fact, it looks like Beth almost _leans into it_ , and Dean thinks his breath is gone. 

At least it is until the guy’s gaze flicks back up to him through the glass, his grip visibly tightening on Beth’s hip, and then Dean’s spinning on his heel, red-faced and furious as he grabs Danny and leaves.

III

It’s the parcel that does it.

That big yellow envelope in the letter box, and maybe he’d have torn it open himself if he could stomach the thought of seeing what was inside – if it was drugs or fake cash or worse, something like - - like underwear, like the sort of thing Dean had bought for Amber. To drop it off at their house, to stick it in the mailbox, right under his nose, it’s more than just staking a claim, it’s like he’s rubbing his nose in it, and Dean just looks at Beth on the floor of their living room, playing with the children – looks at the bags under her eyes and that little bit of extra weight she’d never lost after Jane, at her floral sweater and comfortable shoes, and he loves her, he does, but this guy could have whoever he wants, and Dean just - - doesn’t _get it_. 

He doesn’t get having your pick and picking Beth.

IV

So, okay, maybe the hitman idea wasn’t his best, and maybe this one isn’t either, but the thing is after Jane told him about the park, about _mommy’s friend with the drawings on his neck_ and his little boy who she plays Come Over, Red Rover with, he hadn’t really been able to get it out of his head.

And just so what if he starts taking the kids to the park a little more often? 

So what if he wants to see it for himself? 

He loses count as to how many times he goes, how many times he meets a crowd of wasp-y moms (and Caitlin, who he studiously avoids, okay, because he only slept with her once a few years ago and maybe accidentally threw her under the bus with her husband), how many mosquito bites and bee stings he has to tend to, when it happens. 

Rio (because he knows his name is Rio now – had finally wrangled it when he’d found the guy’s headshot for the hitmen) is standing in the middle of the playground like he has any right to be there, lifting up a little boy who can only be his son (because jeez, he looks as much like him as Kenny looks like Dean) until the kid’s hands grip the monkey bars on his own. And it happens too quickly then, Jane’s gasp of excitement as she detaches herself from Dean’s hand and runs across the playground to collide straight into the guy’s legs. Dean flushes with anger, watching as Rio lets his son go on the monkey bars and reaches a hand down to ruffle Jane’s hair. 

The guy asks a question, and it must be about Beth, because suddenly Jane’s pointing at Dean across the playground, and the guy’s head is whipping around to look at him, a cautious look passing his face as his eyes dart to his son and then back to Dean. He tilts his chin up in acknowledgement, effortless, and Dean awkwardly tries to match the look. 

It doesn’t take long for Rio to move, leaving the kids to play, and Dean watches him, pointedly infusing a _I want to talk to you_ look into his expression, and the guy _obviously_ clocks it, but just settles on a bench on the other side of the playground, throwing an arm across the back of it and if he thinks Dean is going to meet him over there, then he’d got another thing coming - - or, okay. Maybe not. Dean huffs, stomping across the playground and standing over Rio, preening a little at the big shadow he casts over the guy. 

Dropping his hands to his hips, Dean casts a quick glance around the playground, makes sure that nobody’s watching or listening, that nobody is focused on anything that isn’t their own chatter or the hollers of kids on the climbing frame behind him. Dean inhales sharply, finally dropping his gaze down to Rio. 

“I’m not here to make any trouble,” Dean says, inhaling all over again when Rio snorts. “I’m just here to tell you to stay away from my wife.” 

“Gonna make business hard,” Rio drawls easily, and Dean nods. 

“Which is why you’re not going to be in business with her anymore.” 

The words are enough to make Rio laugh, and Dean’s teeth set on edge. He shifts his weight, glowering hard, embarrassingly pleased that Rio seems reluctant to even look at him. 

“Look, Beth’s obviously gotten in over her head with this whole thing,” Dean says, powering through. “You don’t know her like I do, trust me, this is not going to work out for you long term. Bethie just - - y’know, she missed out on some teen rebellion years, so she’s acting out now, and pretty soon she’s gonna be wanting things back the way they were. She’s gonna want to be a full-time mom again, it’s what she’s best at, and when she does, she’s gonna want the whole package again – the house, the marriage, all of it. Which doesn’t leave any room for - - for you, and whatever this is.” 

He gestures out at Rio, only to shift back when Rio lifts his hips off the bench a little, readjusts his seated position like he’s - - well, Dean has no idea, but he has a better one when he can hear the irritation hard in Rio’s voice when he says: 

“She know you out here actin’ like you got the right to make decisions for her?” 

Dean splutters, about to launch into a spiel about exactly what rights their marriage gives him when suddenly – finally – Rio’s gaze flicks up to meet him. 

“Because you ain’t got it. She don’t belong to you.” 

The words sit heavy, firm, in the air between them, and Dean’s mouth hangs open for a second, watching as Rio’s eyes suddenly move past him again, and Dean’s following his gaze before he can help it, out to where Rio’s son is giggling at Jane’s Dory-Finding-Nemo-Whale impression. He flings his head back around, back to Rio, who’s face is - - different now, softer somehow, watching them, and Dean feels a spark of possessive anger in his gut, because he doesn’t get to look at his daughter like that, at any of his children, not like he knows them too. 

And it’s quick then, the thought of Beth on this bench beside him. Quicker still. The thought of his hand on Beth’s hip, his _package_ in their _mailbox_ , the hitmen at the café talking about _pumpkins_ in _patches_.

“So let me guess, she belongs to you?” Dean says snidely, furiously, before he can stop himself, and Rio just laughs again, looking up at him, forehead furrowed as he shakes his head.

“Shit, man, you somethin’ else.”

Fury sparks in his gut all over again, and Dean makes himself loom taller, glad for his extra height, his weight, all of it raised by the fact that he’s standing, but then - - that pisses him off too, feels disrespectful, dismissive, that Rio wouldn’t stand up, that he would barely even _look_ at him. 

“Okay, you know what? Fuck you,” Dean says. “Do whatever you want, but know this – me and Beth? We were meant to be together, and she’ll remember that. One way or another.” 

And shit, he doesn’t even know if he believes that, if he ever did, but he knows that he can’t lose her – not to this guy, not to anyone.

V

The thing is, he doesn’t even think about them together like that.

Maybe it would be easier if he did. Sometimes, he even tries to – finds it easier to cling to that white hot thread of anger when he thinks about that guy’s hands on her, when he thinks about the guy _inside_ her. What they’d look like together - - and Dean scoffs. Frowns. Like somebody’s favourite porn search terms probably – stacked, frigid housewife and tattooed Mexican gangbanger. 

Because that’s the thing – that’s all they should be. Some stupid dollar store fantasy – they don’t have what Dean and Beth have. Not a life, not a history, not a future that makes sense. 

But when he closes his eyes to sleep on a pull-out cot in his own study, it’s not them fucking that he thinks of. It’s himself, beaten and bloody and tied up, and it was just - - the way she _looked_ at this guy, her eyes open in a way Dean had never seen before. It was the way he touched her, so softly, her hair, her cheek, the way he’d hooked his finger beneath her chin, tipped it up. It was the way that she’d _let_ him. 

The way the two of them fought on their patio (Beth never fought with him like that – not toe-to-toe, not so certain, not with her back straight and her gaze firm. Beth fought with him like his mother fought with him, or worse – like she didn’t care enough to fight with him at all), the way he said in his dealership the word partners, staring straight at Dean, like he was daring him to question it, the way she looked at Dean, the fury he’d seen on her face – a fury he’d never seen before – when he’d told her it must’ve been the guy who’d taken Jane. 

Mostly though it was the way it was like he knew how to touch her. Like maybe - - maybe she wasn’t a hoverboard to him, or if she was, like he knew how hoverboards flew, how they moved, how they worked. Like he understood her, but Dean understood her too, he thinks, sitting up in bed, intent and anger sparking in his gut, heading upstairs to wake up the children. To pack their bags.

He didn’t know everything about her, but he did know one thing.

He knew just what she’d do for her kids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: the kids!


End file.
